Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Kalanchoe, a popular houseplant which is a member of the stonecrop family. Its succulent leaves are dark green, smooth and lustrous and, with a whitish layer sandwiched between the upper and lower surface, surprisingly stiffish, like leather. This variety has primrose yellow flowers.
While we’ve been harvesting our first early Maris Peers these two shop-bought potatoes have been sitting, neglected, in the veg rack at the back of the garage.
It might be worth planting them.
So tempting to add the colour but I’m working on my line at the moment.
Some unfortunate bottles lurk for years, if not decades, in the bottom lefthand corner of our Welsh dresser.
I’ve rarely used my favourite pen for natural history subjects – a TWSBI ECO-T with an extra fine nib – over the past year so it’s not surprising that the filler piston has got stuck.
I’m ashamed to say that I’ve never applied the silicone lubricant that was supplied with it for the piston the pen since I bought it in March 2018.
That’s over seven years ago. Oh dear.
I’ve also always used it with waterproof inks: first Noodler’s and in recent years De Atrementis. Perhaps a good soak will free it.
I drew the bookstalls on Farringdon Road in August 1982 for a proposed book on London street markets, which sadly never got published. While drawing this I spotted Colin West, from my year in illustration at the RCA, in his natural habitat, browsing for a bargain.
I drew the backgrounds for the Cowslip’s Warren sequence for Martin Rosen’s 1978 animated version of Watership Down. At that time I often drew with a dip pen with a fine Gillot 1950 nib using Pelikan Special Brown Indian ink and, as we wanted the feel of an oppressively sinister Victorian vicarage for this scene, we decided that would be an appropriate medium.
Because of the scale I worked at, my original drawing was photographed to be enlarged to production size and printed on matt finish photographic paper which was sepia tinted. The colour was added by another background artist (the one who wore headphones as he worked, but I’m afraid that I don’t remember his name, as he started work on the production after I left to complete my Sketchbook of the Natural History of the Country Round Wakefield . . . using my dip pen with the 1950 nib).
I’ve published some of my work on the film before but I don’t think that I included this drawing, which I’ve just come across in a box file of artwork from a 1980s folio which I was looking through in the attic.
I’ve been doing a few exercises to strengthen my right thumb over the past year but after a session with the physiotherapist I’m now adding exercises to improve flexibility in the thumb joints.
It surprises me how relaxed the joints feel after a few repetitions of these simple stretches.
I’d always that strength was the thing I needed to improve but flexibility, resilience and movement are equally important.
Erik Satie, who died 100 years ago last Saturday.
A young Triceratops was the star of the opening film in Walking with Dinosaurs #2.
I like the way the series links new discoveries and speculation about the lives of dinosaurs with the fossils themselves, filmed at digs in America, North Africa and Portugal.
Brought up on Ray Harryhausen dinosaurs, I would never have assumed that Albertosaurus might be lilac with a ginger crew cut but at that time we thought of dinosaurs as giant lizards. Now that we’re aware how closely they were related to birds the colouring makes sense: it reminds me of the prehistoric-looking cassowary.
At the current Harewood House exhibition Austen and Turner: A Country House Encounter I got a close look at this watercolour box that belonged to Turner, dating from around 1842, so possibly a set he used on one of his visits to Harewood.
As in so many watercolour boxes, it’s the darker earth colours that have been neglected and he’s gone for the reds, blues and yellows.
Watercolour cakes were something new but I’m wondering what the three white trays – two of them all but empty – are made of. In a modern box they’d be plastic but these don’t look to me like ceramics or enamel.